The Return of the Soldier recounts the return of the shell shocked Captain Chris Baldry from the trenches of the First World War from the perspective of his cousin Jenny. The novel grapples with the soldier's return from World War I with mental trauma and its effects on the family, and sheds light on their fraught relationships. The successful treatment of the traumatised returned soldier is a fundamental element of The Return of the Soldier. Unlike...

A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression
 
They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation.
Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For...

Kim, an Irish orphan, journeys throughout India and accompanies a holy man on his quest for a mystic river.

"On the windy Nebraska prairie, Alexandra Bergson tends to the failing farm that she inherited from her father. She struggles to raise her brothers on her own. And hse is torn by the emergence of an unexpected passion...This magnificent story, Willa Cather's second novel, has become one of the geat classics of American literature--telling a timeless tale of a strong pioneer woman facing extraordinary challenges and conflicts, shining a light on the...

G. K. Chesterton's masterful mystery features men who earn their livings in the most peculiar ways The Club of Queer Trades is an incredibly exclusive society that comes with a specific conceit for entry: Its members must have a talent that is extremely unusual and use that skill to earn a living. For judge Basil Grant, the club is also a mystery that he must solve. Basil first learns of the group when his brother tells him about an army major who...

Steinbeck’s tough yet charming portrait of people on the margins of society, dependant on one another for both physical and emotional survival
A Penguin Classic
Published in 1945, Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it is: both the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. Drawing on his memories of the real inhabitants of Monterey, California, including longtime friend Ed Ricketts,...

Love and Mr. Lewisham is a novel by H. G. Wells. It was among his first fictional writings outside the science fiction genre. Wells took considerable pains over the manuscript and said that "the writing was an altogether more serious undertaking than I have ever done before." Events in the novel closely resemble events in Wells’ own life. According to Geoffrey H. Wells: "referring to the question of autobiography in fiction, H. G. Wells has somewhere...

Aunt Augusta, in her late 70's, embroils her bachelor nephew, an utterly respectable, dahlia-growing, retired bank manager, in a series of wild escapades.

A House for Mr. Biswas, by Nobel and Booker-Prize winning author V.S. Naipaul, is a powerful novel about one man's struggle for identity and belonging. Born into poverty, then trapped in the shackles of charity and gratitude, Mr. Biswas longs for a house he can call his own. He loathes his wife and her wealthy family, upon whom he is dependent. Finding himself a mere accessory on their estate, his constant rebellion is motivated by the one thing that...